Julep Gunta (and the lengths I went to to own it...)

Hi friends!

A lot has gone on since the last time I posted, my apologies. Blahblahblah normal excuses, but between massive overtime at work every week, MoP raiding, my birthday, the holidays, etc etc etc this poor little blog has gone neglected. Awww. :(

Anyway, hoping to throw together a redesign somewhere in the next week or so, I'm not too wild about this template.

So a while back I picked up Julep Gunta in one of Julep's many promos. I highly dislike Julep's bottles, I will say. They're awkward to store and aren't very stable during use. However, some of their colors are worth making the exception for! Gunta is one. It's from the Trina Turk Fall '12 collection. Hellloooo TARDIS blue. Gunta went on smoothly, I used 2 coats for the below. Cleanup wasn't that difficult, as far as dark blues go it didn't settle into the cuticles much. There was no staining after I removed it. I wore this for about 4 days since the color was so amazing.

Here's where the story in the title comes in! I wore this before I made my swatch stick of it, so I'd already voted it Favorite Blue Ever. When I went to go grab it for real swatches, I dropped it and it shattered evvveeerrryyywwwhhheeerrree. Lucky cleanup is easy on granite and stone tile, but my foot was covered in blue for a few days. Immediately after cleaning I hopped on Julep's site to buy a new bottle (duh). The single bottle was no longer available! Like, it's up there but you can't add it to the cart. Nothing on Copious, nothing on eBay. The only way I could find to get it was to order the September Boho Glam box. Seriously, guys, I ended up having to buy the Julep brown mascara and a 2nd bottle of Popova (a green) just to own Gunta again. /facepalm Hopefully the pics explain why and I'm not just crazy...it's a gorgeous color. ;)

What's your guys' vote for best TARDIS blue polish? 

Thanks for reading!

K x

ABC Challenge "D" + TIOT: Julep Daphne & Elevation Polish Ama Dablam

Hi friendsies! (is that less lame than nailistas? Probably not.)

You maaaaaay have noticed but we have a new layout, it's sort of weird I guess but if anyone has any comments please let me know!

Anyhow! For this overcast, muggy TIOT (which also happens to be ABC Challenge "D" week) I had just gotten Elevation Polish Ama Dablam in my mailbox and really really needed to wear it. But that doesn't start with a D, you say! So I hunted through my spreadsheet and figured out which "D" named polish would work underneath, and settled on Julep Daphne. Daphne reminds me of Zoya Wednesday, but just not as nice. More on that later :/

It was also time for Round 2 of PVA Basecoat Fun. I found some Aleene's Tacky Glue in the back of my storage closet, and according to Duncan's site it's a water-based polymer emulsion. The bubbles in the below pic are totally my fault, guys, I tried adding some water to the glue and shaking it was a bad idea. Oops. Once the basecoat, polish and topcoat go on you can't tell, but Round 3 will be focused on eliminating the bubbles.

Drying time was about 10-15 minutes for both hands. The water in the glue made it sort of lumpy, I don't recommend this for even drying times. I followed the glue with Barielle basecoat, then Julep Daphne. I just don't like these colors on me. I love them in the bottle or on other people, just not me. Plus it had my usual complaint with Julep polishes, which is the runny + globby, crappy brush problem. I had to slap this on in 2 thick coats to get it to look OK. Like I said before the color reminds me of Zoya Wednesday but I like both the Zoya color and formula better.

I feel like my camera makes it look a little brighter and less green here than it really is.

After loading that up with SV I used tape to do angled Ama Dablam tips. AD is awesomeeeeeee. Elevation Polish describes it as being packed with micro multi-colored glitter, micro copper colored glitter, green teal square glitter, blue teal holographic hex glitter and copper colored round glitter. It makes me so happy to look at. Here are bottle shots of both, isn't that just amazing?

This is 2 coats of Ama Dablam brushed over the tips, I didn't need to place the glitter at all.

Julep polishes can be purchased at their site for $14. Elevation Polish announces her releases on her blog, but you can also check out her Etsy or their website. Unfortunately Ama Dablam is no longer available and will not be restocked, according to the preorder page, but her other polishes are gorgeous as well!

So far I see no difference between the glue basecoat and normal basecoat (and I've showered, washed dishes, etc. since last night) but I will follow up with removal either later today or tomorrow.

Has anyone else tried the PVA basecoat?

Thanks for reading!

 K x

NOTD: Julep Pippa + Barielle Buddha-Ful

Hi nailistas (ok that was a little ridiculous but I've had some champagne)

This NOTD is a long, sordid story of FAIL. Argh. The Mr. is gone at a friend's house right now (I chose ME time over Street Fighter time, so I'm holding down the fort) so it's just me, my dog and my blog. LOL. All this free time means you guys get to hear the story.

So last night I planned out a funky french in my head: dark green sparkly tips, silver glitter striping and some nice OPI Coney Island Cotton Candy. Um, that's where everything good about this idea came to an abrupt end. Since everyone's talking about this PVA basecoat business, I picked up a few different glues to try my hand at it. One of them, Tombow Mono Multi, is a PVA according to Google but features "removable application" that I didn't notice at the store. This is so you can reposition photos, etc. as you choose. Turns out, this means this glue dries to a sticky finish. Oooooops. I kept thinking "it'll turn out OK, it'll turn out OK..." No. I ended up with some very nice and sparkly green tips (Smitten Polish I Want It Now) but this lumpy, gluey MESS of a nail bed. At this point I just gave up and took it all off. Note to self, read the glue next time.

After that I was pretty mad so I went for simple. I had recently picked up Julep's Pippa thinking it'd be a pretty good match for my skintone, as a one coat neutral to put under sheers and glitters. It actually is a decent match, but I could probably go for something a little more true neutral, this leans a little pink on  me. Either way I'm really happy with it. The formula is bleh coming out of the bottle, I feel like the brush just keeps dripping forever (thick but runny, the usual) but it has the nice wide brush most of the Juleps have. The below are two coats. I like the simplicity of it. Dry time was a little longer than I'd like but that's just what I expect from most Julep polishes.

After I was done I tried adding a paw print accent, but the base wasn't dry enough yet and things went slightly awry :s

When I was less mad I decided to add a topcoat of Barielle Buddha-ful. I love this polish even if it is a bit goopy and bubbly, it's this gorgeous nude base packed with green iridescent flakies. It bubbled on a few of my nails as you can see but overall I feel pretty happy with this. I used one coat.

Look at those flakies!!

Here's a bottle shot of Buddha-ful.

Pippa can be purchased from Julep's site (price depends on membership) and Buddha-ful can be purchased from barielle.com for $8.00.

Thanks for reading!

K x